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Saturday, September 27, 2008

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Arepas are cornmeal patties that are eaten in place of bread in Venezuela. They are quick to make, healthy and can be eaten at any time of the day. At breakfast, they can be served steaming hot from the oven with a slather of butter, or filled with cheese, ham or perico, Venezuelan-style scrambled eggs. During the day, they make the perfect snack and are sold in fast-food outlets called areperas, with fillings like grated cheese, black beans, chicken salad and avocado, or shredded beef.

The secret to cooking arepas is Harina P.A.N., the first and most popular brand of pre-cooked maize flour. It was developed by a Venezuelan engineer called Dr Caballero Mejias in 1954 and revolutionized Venezuelan cooking when it was introduced by the beer company Polar in 1960.

Harina P.A.N. makes the whole process of preparing maize dough quick and easy and is a far cry from the traditional method of laboriously soaking, peeling and then pounding corn kernels in a large wooden mortar called a pilon, which is still practised in many parts of Venezuela today.

The original slogan for Harina P.A.N. was "Se acabo la piladera" ("No more pounding").

The great thing about Harina P.A.N. in our health-conscious world is that maize flour is easily digested, contains no additives or bleaching agents and is 100 per cent gluten-free.

It comes in two varieties, yellow or white, and can be used to make arepas, as well as savoury patties called empanadas, and hallacas - a traditional Christmas dish.

Once the maize dough has been prepared and the arepas made into a distinctive flying saucer shape, they can be baked, fried, cooked on a charcoal grill or boiled.

How to Bake Arepas
To make enough dough for six arepas you will need:

Ingredients
2 cups of Harina P.A.N. flour
2 cups of water
A pinch of salt

Preparation

1. Place two cups of flour in a mixing bowl. Add a pinch of salt and mix through with clean dry hands.

2. Measure two cups of warm water and pour onto flour.
3. Knead together the flour and water with your hands until the mixture is thoroughly blended and there are no grainy lumps.

4. If the is too soggy and sticks to your fingers add more flour. If it is too dry add water. The perfect dough should roll easily into a large ball without cracking.

5. Break off a fistful of the dough and roll it into a ball in your hands. Then pat it and turn it in your hands until its about half an inch thick and about 3-4 inches across. It should have the classic flying saucer shape now.
6. Make the rest of the arepas you want to cook. If any dough is left over wrap it in plastic - to keep in the moisture - and place in fridge. It will keep for three to four days.

7. Heat a little oil in a heavy frying pan or griddle and when hot add the arepas, as many as will comfortably fit in the pan. The idea is to give the arepas a crunchy exterior ("una cara", literally a face, as they say in Venezuela) so don't turn the heat up too high. When the arepas are brown on one side turn them over. The whole process should not take longer than 10 minutes.

8. Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

9. When arepas have been browned, reduce oven to 200 degrees, place arepas on a baking tray at the top of the oven for 15-20 minutes. When ready they should sound hollow when tapped with a knife.
10. Serve with butter and grated cheese, scrambled eggs, black beans, ham, hot sauce and anything else you want to fill them with. The trick is to make an incision in the arepa - slicing through the middle but not going all the way - and then open it up like a pocket for the filling.

I made these and I think they came out okay. The outside was crunchy, but the inside was a little gummy. This is after 15 minutes on a griddle and another 15 in a 350 degree oven. Is this right, or should they be dry inside more like an English muffin?

Arepas are wonderful and provide a great food source for my patients many who can not have gluten!

They are simple to make with this flour and if my acupuncture patient has time they can make several days worth. Breakfast and lunch are the hard times to find something healthy to eat if you are working with a nutritional naturopath like myself so I love your advice and review of harnia PAN.

The biggest drawback is time for people. With Arepas, an acupuncture patient can fill it with meats, vegetables, even eggs or cheese. Though I recommend my local patients in Denver Colorado that they use soy or goat cheese if possible. If using dairy cheese, use less and look for a hard cheese as opposed to a soft processed cheese.

As an acupuncturist in Littleton Colorado I have to highly recommend your blog and the tasty ideas to my homeopathic patients as well as my other alternative health clients.

There's a middle eastern supermarket on North End Road, near the intersection with Lillie Road, which sells Harina PAN (both yellow and white) for GBP 1.50. Nearest tube station is West Brompton in west London.

Hi All, Does anyone know if you can get Arepa maker machines in the UK? I see some from the US on Ebay but they are only 120v so not useful here. My parents have one and it really takes the work out of arepas so any help would be great!Thanks for this lovely blog by the way! :o)

I make arepas the traditional Colombian way as I lived with Colombians for some years. I just mix the flour with the water until the dough is made (no salt) and then I put on a grill for about 3 mins on each side. I like my arepas slightly overcooked so when they're just right I put them on a plate and spread butter on them, then sprinkle some sea salt on top, perfectly scrumptious!!

I'll give you a different way to make arepas (I would like to think simpler as well). I prepare a full batch in my budare in less than three minutes:

1. First, pour the water into a bowl first and dilute the salt. This has a couple of benefits: The mix is more uniformely salted and people can fix it by adding more salt or water depending on their taste.

2. Then, gradually pour the Harina Pan in the bowl while stirring with your other hand (I do this with split fingers). Do not press the dough with your fists or it will form unwanted hard lumps.

Now the trick is to pour flour until you get a thin, watered down consistency. You'll notice that is you let it rest a little while the dough will harden, and you don't want your dough to be hard as a rock. If after resting the dough is still too thin you can pour some more Harina Pan and stir some more until you get it right.

This method has some additional advantages as well: - If you are playful you can add other ingredients to your dough that give different textures and they will be easier to mix: some butter, shredded cheese, an egg, a tablespoon of powedered milk (I know many Venezuelan houses where they do this). - I probably like my dough to be a bit wetter (not near as wet as pancake mix of course) but just enough that allows me to finish forming them directly on top of the budare, and so I can have some big thin arepas (arepas andinas) which would be difficult to make directly on the palms of my hands.

3. Now one last tip. My mix probably has more moisture trapped inside the crusts they won't be as crispy as I like them (and they'll get gummy very fast which is the exact same problem with Tostyarepas), so what I do is I open them as if I were to fill them up and I let them cook a bit more before serving.

Hi! I made these today for the first time after finally finding harina PAN here in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia (virtually the end of the earth). I had no trouble with the recipe and the results were delicious. Thank you so much!

My book: Bradt Guide to Venezuela

My book: Culture Smart! Venezuela

About Me

After 12 years of adventuring in Venezuela I came back to try my luck in the UK.
Although I try to visit Venezuela as often as I can it does tug at my heart strings some nights that I am too far from Choroni to hear the tambores on the malecon.
Fortunately my job as a journalist in England allows me to follow Venezuelan and Latin American developments and keep my Spanish up to scratch.
The UK is also a good place to do research and meet other like-minded Latin-America-philes for proper rum and salsa sessions.